1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for scheduling traffic between an input port and an output port by constructing super-cells, and more specifically, to a method and system that uses crossbar switches and a credit system with a virtual-output queuing (VOQ) method.
2. Background of the Prior art
In the related art diffserv traffic scheduling system, a fixed field within a datagram header indicates the class of the datagram, which in turn determines the per-hop-behavior (PHB) of the datagram receives at each diffserv router. Each class of traffic is an aggregate of individual traffic flows, and the aggregation of flows into classes occurs only at the boundary nodes of the network. Similarly, conditioning flows (i.e. shaping and policing) occur only at the boundary odes.
Related art diffserv routers provide Quality of Service (QoS) by reserving bandwidth for different classes of traffic. In general, it is necessary to reserve sufficient bandwidth for the traffic in any given class to ensure that the high-QoS classes receive superior treatment. The above-described related art diffserv technique is scalable, since interior nodes concern themselves only with providing bandwidth guarantees to a small number of aggregate flows, and interior nodes do not shape or police traffic. Further, the prior art diffserv technique uses a naive algorithm for queuing.
However, the aforementioned related art scheduling method and system has various problems and disadvantages. For example, but not by way of limitation, related art interior routers do not perform compliance checks. Further, the related art system cannot handle non-conforming cells (i.e., series of cells having a total size greater than the available capacity for cell transport), and instead simply discards those cells, thus resulting in non-transport of certain cells by the related art scheduler.
Further, the related art scheduler sends full status information at each time slot, which results in a waste of system resources and an increased processing time. As a result of the naive algorithm used for queuing, cells may stay queued for an unbounded time when the number of cells in a queue is less than the threshold for processing those cells, which results in an extensive processing delay. Additionally, the related art system and method is unfair, due to the unfair treatment of cells at the input ports 1a . . . 1N, including during use of the related art round robin algorithm, which does not permit equal or prescribed weighting of access to the scheduler by all non-empty queues in an input port to overcome the related art fairness problem.